Can you be "healthy" and "fat"?

For the first several decades of my life, I believed something that was… completely untrue.

I believed that being thin = healthy and being fat = unhealthy.

In my mind, back then, it was black and white. If you’re thin, then you’re in good health. Thin people are healthy and fat people are not. Plain and simple. The end.  

Later, after discovering the Health At Every Size movement—and after educating myself about what “health” really means—I realized I’d been embarrassingly mistaken.

Here’s what I understand nowadays:

* You can be thin... and be unhealthy.

For instance, you can be thin and smoke constantly, drink excessively, lead a sedentary lifestyle, and isolate yourself at home, rarely connecting with your community. Sure, you’re skinny. But do you feel healthy and strong? Are you...

What is "normal" eating?

I hear lots of women say:

“I want to stop dieting. I want to stop bingeing. I want to just… eat… NORMALLY!”

Of course, this begs the questions… What is “normal” eating? What does that actually mean? I do think it means different things for different people.

This is what it means for me:

* Normal eating means I am not counting, measuring, or obsessing about food. I don’t track calories. I don’t track carbs. I don’t keep a food journal and record everything I eat. I just... eat. No calculator or notebook required!

* Normal eating means that most of the time—not always, not every single meal—I eat when I’m hungry and I stop when I’m satisfied. I stop before I feel uncomfortably stuffed because I value feeling good and comfortable.

* Normal eating means that when I’m...

Well, that diet went well. (It did not.)

What’s the #1 cause of weight gain?

The answer is...

Dieting.

Numerous studies prove that dieting almost never leads to lasting weight loss. In fact, 95% of dieters end up maintaining their current weight—or gaining additional weight—as a result of the restrictive diet they’ve tried.  Their weight set point can increase and the 5% that do lose weight often only lose between 5-10 pounds.

This is because—as you and I both know, all too well—diets always backfire in the end.

You know how it goes. After depriving yourself of your favorite foods for a few days or weeks, you reach a point where you just can’t do it anymore. You allow yourself to cheat—“just this once,” you promise yourself—but as soon as you taste that first brownie or slice of pizza, it’s like you...

Are you fatphobic? (An uncomfortable question.)

When you see a fat person, what runs through your mind?

I know this is an uncomfortable question. But stay with me.

Be completely honest with yourself. Do you often notice yourself thinking cruel, mean-spirited, judgmental, or even fearful thoughts about fat people?

Of course, you would never—EVER—say any of these thoughts aloud. Certainly not to their face. But privately, confidentially, deep inside… do nasty thoughts sometimes arise in your mind?

For instance, you see a fat person joining your Thursday night fitness class. Without knowing anything about them, instantly, you make a snap judgment. You think, “Oh great. Now the teacher is going to have to slow down the whole class and make things easier. We won’t get a very good workout today.”

You see a fat person ordering a cheeseburger and...

Getting to... neutral.

I often talk about why it’s so liberating to become “food neutral” and “weight neutral.” But what do these terms actually mean?

Here’s a metaphor…

Imagine you’re in high school and you fall in love for the very first time. Then your boyfriend (or girlfriend) cheats on you with your best friend.

Your heart is absolutely shattered. You sob in your bed while listening to sad albums by The Smiths for hours on end. You feel like you’ll never truly be happy again.

Every time you look at a photo of your ex-boyfriend, you feel INTENSE emotions. Anger. Grief. Sadness. Maybe even self-loathing. It’s a LOT. A big whirlwind of thoughts and feelings. Almost too much to bear.

Time moves along. You attend college. You graduate. You choose a career. You date other people. You fall in love again. You get engaged. You get married. Life evolves. Seasons pass.

Then one day, many years later, you’re rummaging around in...

Your belly is so cute!

My one year old son has the most adorable belly.

We all love to tickle it and zerbert it and gently poke his belly button and shout “beep beep” or “hooooonk!”  

We all think it’s hysterical. He loves it so much. He’ll lift up his shirt to show off his belly for more fun and games.

Unfortunately, at a certain point, many kids stop thinking that their belly is “cute” and “adorable.” Most kids become inundated with harmful messages from our diet-obsessed, thin-obsessed, heavily-Photoshopped culture. They become embarrassed about their bellies—and other parts of their bodies, too. They desperately try to shrink themselves and try to take up less space—as if they aren’t worthy or allowed to take up the space that their body requires.

Culturally, we’ve got big issues when it comes to our...

What is your #1 pursuit?

What is your #1 pursuit in life?

Is it to finally get that “perfect” or “ideal” or “better” body?

That was my #1 pursuit for a long time, I’m embarrassed to admit.

Cultivating the ideal physique—which in my mind, was long, lean, toned, and sculpted—was one of my top priorities in life. It’s staggering how much time I spent trying to create “that body.”

If I were to tally it all up, how much time would it be? A thousand hours? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A stupefying amount of time!

Today, I choose to spend my time differently.

Today, I have different pursuits:

#1. I want to be a great mama to my five kids.

#2. I want my kids to feel my immense LOVE for them every day.

#3. I want to make sure I never let my kids leave the house without receiving a big hug and hearing “I love...

The bow always snaps back

One of my mentors, Isabel Foxen Duke, is a leader in the Health at Every Size movement who wants to help women stop feeling crazy around food.

Isabel often describes the cycle of dieting/deprivation/restricting and binge eating as a “bow and arrow.” It’s an excellent metaphor for an experience that’s all-too-familiar for so many women—including many of my clients when they first begin working with me.

To paraphrase Isabel’s metaphor… Picture a bow and arrow. When you pull back the arrow—pulling it back, back, back, making the bowstring so tense and taught—that’s when you’re depriving yourself. (“No carbs. No sugar. No chocolate. No dairy. No, no, no!” Etc.)

Sure, you can pull back the arrow. Sure, you can hold it there for a while. But eventually, your arm gets...

                           

New Questions

When women hire me, at first, they’ll often ask questions like...

“How can I stop overeating?”

“How can I stop emotional eating?”

“How can I stop eating so much junk food?”

“How can I stop eating ___(fill in the blank)___?”

“What kinds of meals should I be eating?”

These may seem like the “right questions” to be asking. But ultimately, these questions keep us trapped in a cycle where we’re obsessively fixating on food and where we only feel “good” about ourselves (proud, confident, lovable, worthy) if we eat a particular way or look a particular way. Ultimately, these questions keep us stuck.

I’d like to propose some different questions:

“How can I feel more relaxed around food?”

“How can I feel ‘at ease’ as I move through my daily life?”

“How...

                         

What is intuitive eating?

Have you ever heard the phrase “intuitive eating”?

Maybe you’ve heard someone mention it—but you’re not completely sure what it means?

Here’s how I define it:

* When you’re eating intuitively, it means you are not following a diet, detox, or any other type of meal plan, like a low-carb plan, Paleo or Whole30. Instead of following a meal plan, you’re following the internal guidance that’s coming from within your own body.

* When you’re eating intuitively, it means you notice when you feel hungry—and then you eat. You notice when you feel satiated—and then you stop eating.  This does NOT become another diet by any means. You know that there will be times when you eat until you are uncomfortably full (hello Thanksgiving) or because you want to (hello apple cider donuts fresh from the farm).  

*...